Embodiments disclosed herein relate to thermoelectric cooling devices, and more specifically to compact thermoelectric cooling devices for use with aircraft galley equipment.
Thermoelectric devices (TEDs) are used to cool the contents of food and beverage chiller compartments in aircraft galleys. The TEDs, also known as Peltier devices, are solid-state heat pumps that utilize the Peltier effect to move heat from one side of the devices to the other side. Multiple TEDs are sometimes used in parallel to cool the contents of the compartments. In these applications, there is typically a higher weight and size as well as a lower overall efficiency in heat transfer due to the use of the multiple TEDs. In addition, the multiple TEDs typically have different temperatures on their respective cold and/or hot sides from one another, creating an undesired temperature gradient across a single side of the multiple TEDs in parallel.